


A Lost, Lost Cause

by LostUnderTheSurface



Category: Batman (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Evil!Tim Drake, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 17:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostUnderTheSurface/pseuds/LostUnderTheSurface
Summary: Damian: "You survived the Pit."Tim: "I was already a monster."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly unedited. Critique and corrections welcomed.
> 
> Edit: Title from "Lost Cause" by Imagine Dragons.

He knows very little of his predecessor. The others never mention him, and so he never asks. A bygone relic of the past, he scoffs, turning his back on the glass case in one alcove of the cave. If they don't see fit to talk of Drake, then neither does he.

The crooks on the street are more conversational than the cave's inhabitants. These days, Damian is more likely to spend a half-hour debating any number of subjects with a random, apprehended mugger than he is to get ten words out of his father.

He blames Todd for it.

They call him the Fox for a reason. Jason Todd, former Robin, current criminal mastermind. Like Rimmel before him, Todd is evil and conniving and so very, very sneaky. Comes from being Bruce's apprentice, Grayson says sadly. Some skills can be learned too well.

But Damian is not interested in the washout of his father's feather-themed menagerie. He is intrigued by the neatly-kept files on the Bat-computer, curious about the locked door down the hall from his own bedroom, jealous of the flicker of approval in Pennyworth's eyes whenever an ignorant visitor compliments the attractive young man in the portraits lining the gallery. There is pain in the butler's face—there always is when Drake is brought into conversation—but Damian ignores that.

Pain means love, and he cannot think of Drake and love in the same sentence.

He knows better than to snoop where he is not wanted. When Grayson goes into the locked room, Damian can only watch with envious eyes at the obvious connection Grayson still seeks from his lost brother. When Father sits for hours, staring blankly at one particular spot of the cave wall, Damian sulks quietly on the mats, seething inside that he is here, _he is here,_ and Father cannot see him.

The girls are better. Cassandra is silent always, and would not be open to conversation with him even if she were of such a nature. The Brown girl is more annoying, but at least she never ignores Damian whenever he snaps at her in anger (and it's not that he wants her attention, he just doesn't want to be overlooked in favor of a ghost).

Gordon is the only one who so much as broaches the subject of the forgotten Robin. Damian is delivering a package to her late one night, (under duress, he adds under his breath), and when he arrives, ruffled and snappish from a long trek ordered by Batman, he finds her cursing emphatically at one of her many screens.

“D*mn you, Tim,” she mutters, poking at the keyboard as if it might explode. “Why'd you have to do this to us?”

“Drake cannot hear you,” Damian informs her primly, irritatingly. “If he had, I'm certain such words would have no appeal to bring him back.”

“You don't know him,” Oracle shoots back. “Just put it over there.”

Damian deposits the package dutifully, then turns back for one final jab: “I know none of you loved him.”

She pauses, and Damian feels a thrill of triumph that he has finally gotten a reaction to his incendiary comments.

“You don't know him,” Gordon repeats slowly, menacingly. “And I pray to God you never do.”

“Is that a threat?” Damian smirks.

“Think of it as a warning.” She turns in her chair to face him fully, glasses glinting in the flickering light of the monitors. “We loved Tim, never doubt it. But he was not like you, or Dick, or Jason. He was smarter than any of us, and we underestimated him.”

“He died,” Damian says bluntly. “I hardly call that winning.”

“He came back,” Oracle says in a dead voice. “How many people can claim that?”

Not many. Damian knows a few (most members of his own family), but for an ordinary human, with no ties to the League—that would take something truly monstrous to bring him back. Unless the Demon's Head did it to mess with Batman. (Damian himself is proof that the al Ghüls are not above manipulating family bonds to bring about their own designs).

In the end, Damian decides it proves nothing. Anyone can die; anyone can come back. The chasm between life and death is not as deep as some would believe. He knows this intimately.

But he cannot help wondering about Drake. Like a child desperate to know touch simply because they have been ordered not to, he fiddles with the idea of meeting the man in person some day. Oracle may be against him coming into contact with someone so unpredictable, but Damian can handle himself. He's ten years old and an assassin and he's _Robin_. He is more than a match for Drake.

It takes a kidnapping and a chase across three continents before his wish is fulfilled. In the middle of the bombs exploding and the helicopter crashing and Grayson yelling in his comm and Batman disappearing beneath a thousand tons of rubble, he catches sight of a flicker of red and black among the few pillars that are still standing. Even without a clear view, he knows who it is. There is silence from Grayson and a certain stillness in the air that gives it all away.

“Robin, stand down!” Nightwing shouts, and Damian darts forward between the pillars. “Stop! Robin! Don't you—Damian!”

The sound of his real name almost gives him pause, but he is Damian Wayne, the Dark Squire, and he does not back down even when real names are used in the field against Batman's express orders.

The area behind the pillars is dark, and he switches on night-vision to track Drake. A bright greenish blob is moving quickly down the embankment, and Damian scuttles after it, intent on his prey. He is so focused on the form in front of him that the sudden kick to his back catches him off-guard. He tumbles expertly, regains his feet, whirls to face this new adversary. A fist almost bruises his chin, but he grabs and twists, unbalancing his opponent. They tumble down the hill, hitting rocks and shrubs, kicking up sand as they grapple with each other. Damian is snarling, spitting insults out with every breath, but the other is strangely silent, giving only the minimalist of grunts whenever he's on the bottom.

They hit the bank of the river and Damian scrambles away. His ground combat is quite good for someone his size, but he is only a boy, and his heavier opponent would have the advantage on him. They stand facing each other, neither winded by their unexpected tumble, and when Damian flicks off the night-vision, he sees the distinctive red and black in the glow of the fire raging on the hill.

“Drake,” he hisses. A trickle of blood slides down from his nose (not broken, quite, but definitely bleeding).

The other says nothing. There is a faint splash from the river, and two heads whip toward it. Damian is too slow with his batterang. There is a bang and a flash, and a body bobbing in the current. He looks back in time to see Drake tucking the pistol back into his thigh-holster.

“Drake!” he screeches. “What have you done?”

There is enough light for him to see the smile, sharp and gleaming, that slides across Drake's face.

“I killed a man,” he says, and his voice sends a bolt of unease straight to Damian's stomach. “What will you do about it, heir of al Ghül?”

“I'm Robin!” Damian insists hotly. “I don't kill.”

“On the outside.” Drake shrugs. “But instinct can't be undone. Only subverted.”

“What would you know?” Damian demands. “You turned your back on Father's ways. You're a traitor!”

“I'm not lying like he does,” Drake laughs, but it is bitter. “I don't pretend evil can be defeated. I just accept the truth: we are who we are. And there is nothing you can do that will change that.”

“You are deluded.” Damian takes a few circling steps, and Drake mimics him, mocking him. “Father is right.”

“Did he tell you about me?” Drake asks softly, almost gently, as if breaking tragic news to a child. “What I was like before I died?”

“They don't speak of you,” Damian admits. “They hide you away like a treasured gem. They care more about you than they do for me!”

“Such honesty,” Drake says sardonically. “You're smarter than you realize, Damian al Ghül.” He pauses, contemplative, then continues, “Bruce may treat my memory like a stained glass window in a church, but even saints have their faults. I was never the Robin he wanted.” His voice grows hard. “I was just a Replacement. A fill-in. And a doomed one, at that.”

“So you stay away?” Damian hints. “For your sake?”

“Oh no.” Drake chuckles, deep in his throat, almost like a cough. “For theirs. I loved them, you know. I gave them everything and they threw me out like an old rug, beaten until even the fibers cracked and gave way. Do you think I could trust myself among them after that?”

No, he cannot. But he cannot imagine that someone like Drake, blood-thirsty, remorseless Drake, would let any of them live if they truly treated him as he perceives.

“I do it for them,” Drake repeats patiently. “They already think of me as damned. Why should I bring my curse down on them?”

“But they...miss you,” Damian says, and his voice sounds thin even to his own ears.

Drake shakes his head, almost regretfully. “Not me, al Ghül. Just what they wished I was.” He switches tracks abruptly, his voice rising airily. “It was your mother who brought me back, Damian. Dropped me in a Pit and let me claw my way out. She gave me life. I owe more to her than I ever did to Bruce. And she doesn't pretend that things are getting better. She sees what I've become.”

“She disowned me,” Damian says quietly. “I have no connection to her anymore.”

“Pity. We could have been friends.” Drake does not sound sorry at all. “I suppose I could kill you now. Play a little game with Bruce. But that'd be too on the nose. Too obvious. Subtly is a much harder art to master.”

“You can't win,” Damian tells him. “Your ways are wrong.”

“My ways are the way things are. You can't change nature. Besides,” he shrugs, careless and unaffected, “they'd just bring you back with the Pit. I can't take the risk of you usurping my position as favorite black sheep.”

“I would survive, “ Damian objects. “You did.”

“I was older.” Drake smiles. “Besides, I was already a monster.”

Drake salutes him then, still smiling, only with a sickly edge to it, and vanishes into the shadows. Damian stands by the river and listens to it churning like the uneasiness festering in his stomach.

He doesn't mention the conversation to Grayson or Father. He doesn't know what to think of it. He cannot reconcile his image of Drake to the way they treat his memory. Perhaps there is some truth to what Drake said. Maybe he was beyond redemption. A monster, he called himself.

Or maybe Drake is insane. The Pit drives one to the edges of madness, flirts with the border between fantasy and reality. Who knows what is floating through that madhouse he calls a brain.

And yet.

And yet he cannot forget Drake's smile. Drake's voice. Drake's parting shot.

_I was already a monster._

And if nothing else, Damian can believe that.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fairly certain another author has used this premise before in regards to Tim dying and being raised with the Pit. If anyone knows who it was, I would be delighted to give them credit for inspiring me to write this fic.


End file.
